The Flash: Cause and Effect

May 9, 2017 7:56 PM - Season 3, Episode 21

Barry takes drastic measures to stop Savitar. Meanwhile, H.R. continues to push Tracy Brand to design the trap for Savitar; and Killer Frost returns with an interesting proposal.

*AV Club recap - Barry rediscovers the fun of being The Flash in a very meta episode
*IGN review - Meet Bartholomew Allen
*Den of Geek review - The Flash mostly dropped the ball on the Savitar follow-up, but gave us a laugh-out-loud filler episode in its place.

posted by oh yeah! (10 comments total)

Barry doesn't have enough brain cells to spare, don't go messing around with them! I think he was down to his last two!

The Savitar paradox actually makes sense, but I still don't think they have a clear definition of what a time remnant is. It was originally supposed to be a time traveler that's already traveled through time, then with Zoom they just made it mean a speedster doubled themself. So Savitar is a product of both definitions, he was a duplicate created through magic, and is a time traveler that's just passing through.
posted by FallowKing at 4:07 AM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Barry doesn't have enough brain cells to spare, don't go messing around with them! I think he was down to his last two!

Amnesia-Barry was adorable, I'm sorry we couldn't keep him around permanently.

Iris' "that's the moment I fell in love with you" story though skeeved me out entirely. No, writers. I've done my best to get past my initial "but what about the Westermarck effect?" reaction to Barry/Iris, and I'm fine with them now, but don't try to get me to ship little Barry/Iris. Just, no.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:36 AM on May 10, 2017 [3 favorites]

If this has to be the way the story goes, I want Barry to defeat his future self by gathering up all of his enemies from the past
Servo5678's comment from last episode

you should see the preview for next week's episode!
posted by numaner at 12:14 PM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Uh, why did they skip right over how Killer Frost got away from an amnesiac Savitar choking her? I would very much like to see that scene which could foreshadow another way of defeating him. Also, if amnesiac Barry resulted in Wally never getting his power, it should have also resulted in Savitar not existing.

Arg I need to stop trying to make sense of this show.
posted by numaner at 12:25 PM on May 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was somewhat surprised to find that I didn't mind this much. Must have caught me in a receptive mood, as the futureBarry's little handwavey "you can never hold us to anything ever again" moment of saying that the more you fap about with time, the funkier cause & effect get was fine by me, rather than making me think they were writing themselves a get out of complaints free card. If you're gonna do time travel either go full PRIMER or just accept that it's baloney. Maybe they learned a little from Legends this season.

When they were talking about what Barry is really like and there was some chatting about how he's broody I expected Iris to say "well no, not constantly - you're not Oliver."
posted by phearlez at 1:05 PM on May 10, 2017

This Heat Monger guy can't hold a candle to Mick Rory.
posted by Servo5678 at 6:07 AM on May 11, 2017

Savage burn, Servo5678.
posted by hanov3r at 7:00 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

What can I say? The warmed over replacement for Mick got me fired up.
posted by Servo5678 at 8:38 AM on May 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm so glad y'all watch this show so I don't have to.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 6:12 PM on May 11, 2017

Yeah, at this point I'm willing to have all of Barry's dark memories wiped so he can become Bart. I wish this show was fun again. I like the characters but this shit is dragging on and on and on.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:53 PM on May 12, 2017